NantKwest to Present at Jefferies 2018 Global Healthcare Conference

CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA, June 5, 2018 - NantKwest (Nasdaq:NK), a leading, clinical-stage natural killer cell based therapeutics company, today announced that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, Chairman & CEO of NantKwest will be presenting and conducting one-on-one meetings at the upcoming Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, June 6, 2018. The presentations will feature a review of the company’s R&D efforts, along with a clinical update provided by company management.

A webcast of the presentation will be available at www.nantkwest.com. Listeners are encouraged to visit the web site at least 10 minutes prior to the start of the presentation to register, download and install any necessary software. A replay of the presentation will be available for 90 days.

About NantKwest Inc.

NantKwest (Nasdaq:NK) is a pioneering, next generation, clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the unique power of our immune system using natural killer (NK) cells to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases. NK cells are the body’s first line of defense due to the innate ability of NK cells to rapidly identify and destroy cells under stress, such as cancer or virally-infected cells.

NantKwest’s unique NK cell-based platform, with the capacity to grow active killer cells as a biological cancer therapy, has been designed to induce cell death against cancer or infected cells by three different modes of action: (1) Direct killing using activated NK cells (aNK) that release toxic granules directly into the cell through cell to cell contact, (2) Antibody-mediated killing using haNKs, which are NK cells engineered to incorporate a high affinity receptor that binds to an administered antibody, enhancing the cancer cell killing effect of that antibody, and (3) Targeted activated killing using taNKs, which are NK cells engineered to incorporate chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to target tumor-specific antigens found on the surface of cancer cells.

Our aNK, haNK and taNK platform addresses certain limitations of T cell therapies including the reduction of risk of serious “cytokine storms” reported after T cell therapy. As an “off-the-shelf” therapy, NantKwest’s NK cells do not rely on a patient’s own often compromised immune system. In Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with late stage cancer, NantKwest’s NK cells have been successfully administered as an outpatient infusion therapy without any reported severe side effects, even at doses of 10 billion cells.

By leveraging an integrated and extensive genomics and transcriptomics discovery and development engine, together with a pipeline of multiple, clinical-stage, immuno-oncology programs that include a Phase 2 trial for a rare form of melanoma and the planned initiation of a clinical trial of NK cells targeted to breast cancer, we believe NantKwest is uniquely positioned to be the premier immunotherapy company and transform medicine by delivering living drugs in a bag and bringing novel NK cell-based therapies to routine clinical care. For more information please visit ‎https://www.nantkwest.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong on Twitter@ Dr.PatSoonShiong